


Further Up and Further North

by aurilly



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Dimension Travel, Friendship, Gen, Realm Hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 13:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5746210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out there are links between Narnia and other worlds, too, because Edmund keeps finding himself in a place where it’s always winter. <i>Again.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Further Up and Further North

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm writing another story with a similar initial premise, but it's my _favorite_ premise. FWIW, this is a different scenario, with different fandoms, and a different outcome.

He had only been king for a year, but Edmund had already learned that wine—especially faun wine—disrupted his sleep just as reliably as it warmed his insides.

At home, in Cair Paravel, this wouldn’t have been a problem; however, tonight Edmund was sleeping in a cave on Ettinsmoor, shard by his brother and their guard. A bedraggled army of wolves, dwarves, bears, friendly giants, and other creatures camped just outside in tents that shielded them from the late-season blizzard.

“Some guard he is,” Edmund muttered to himself, as he heard Benlan snoring at the entrance to the cave. There was no way for Edmund to climb over the bear’s enormous body to get outside, so, although it was disgusting, he decided to find a corner in the cave in which to relieve himself.

He felt around in the darkness, seeking a tucked away crevice. Oddly, although the cave itself was small, this passage seemed to keep going. Edmund scrambled on his hands and knees, expecting to hit a wall at any second. Instead, he found himself outside again, having gone through what appeared to be an entrance to the cave no one had noticed before—the other side of the hill, he assumed.

He stumbled about for a moment, trying to adjust his eyes to the blinding white around him—snow so thick that he might have thought it was dawn if he didn’t know perfectly well it was the middle of the night. After taking care of his business, he turned around with the intention of heading back to the cave, only to find that it was out of sight. 

There was no way of telling how long he blundered through the snowstorm, groping blindly for something familiar—for grey rock and what should have been an entire army.

It was the staff he spotted first. _Her_ staff. And beside the top of the staff, two eyes. Blue and inhumanly bright against the white face that slowly came into focus in the snow. 

Edmund had been hypnotized and conquered by eyes like these before. But his time in Narnia had taught him an important lesson. This time, he ran.

He was in the cave again before he even saw the entrance. The crevice shouldn’t have been big enough to allow for such an easy passage, but he was too frightened to think about that just now. He tried to call for Peter, but he was panting too hard to speak. He stood guard, sword drawn in his trembling arms, ready to slay the ghost of the witch… or whatever it was. But she—it—never came. 

The next morning, Peter and Benlan found Edmund crouched in a dark and unpleasant corner of the cave, his head on his knees and his cheek perilously close to being sliced open by his naked sword.

“Ed, what on earth…” Peter said as he dragged his protesting and still mostly asleep brother to his feet.

The blizzard was spent and the grey light of morning now suffused the cave, allowing Edmund to see clearly.

There was nothing but unyielding stone in front of him. No exit to the other side of the hill, no haunting blue eyes. No danger.

“Have you taken to sleepwalking now, brother?” Peter asked.

“No, it was… There was a hole at the back of the cave… The Witch…”

Peter and Benlan glanced at one another.

“A little too much faun wine, I suspect,” Benlan said.

“Come on, Ed,” Peter said. “We’ll get you some tea and make plans for the day. You’ll forget all about your bad dreams.”

Edmund experienced a sense of déjà vu, the brackish taste of just desserts.

Later, as they gathered the troops for the morning’s march even farther north, he tried to convince himself that Peter was right, that it had all been a dream.

* * *

A few weeks later, the Narnian army was marching home. No one was more surprised by their victory against the giants than the boy-general kings, who were still green in battle and new to commanding their multi-specied troops.

Late one afternoon, Edmund, who usually left such arrangements to his brother’s care, gave a pre-emptive order to halt for the night. Peter gave him a questioning sidelong glance, but let the order stand. They had a silent pact, all four of them, never to publicly weaken one another’s image (sibling squabbles still erupted, though, from time to time). 

They made ready to camp at one of the same spots they had on their way north. The little kings were to occupy the cave once more. This time, Edmund stayed away from the wine. Once everyone was asleep, he unsheathed his sword, lit a torch, and went to explore the back of the cave. Again, he felt onwards, sparks from the torch burning his face.

The weather was mild this night, a moment ago, but it was still snowing here, in the place Edmund no longer thought was simply the other side of the hill.

After a few minutes of walking, he all but tripped over what he’d initially thought was a small snow bank, but which turned out to be a pile of fur. Low growling informed him that the fur belonged to something not only living, but newly awoken by his clumsiness. An enormous wolf—dire wolf, by the size of it.

But not one of his.

“It’s all right, it’s all right.” Edmund breathed slowly and let the growling wolf sniff about him to know he was a friend. But he was no fool; he took care to keep his fingers away from the bared fangs. 

The wolf was so large and obviously intelligent that Edmund kept waiting for it to speak; he was somewhat surprised when, instead, its growls softened, and it nudged him to the left. Following the animal’s lead, he soon spotted a ramshackle cabin—a rough, dilapidated thing of logs and mud that looked long uninhabited. The wolf’s insistently prodding nose directed him forward, urging him to open the door that was hanging by only half a hinge. 

There was a dying fire inside the single room, but it provided enough light for Edmund to make out what looked like the runt of a giant’s litter. Edmund raised his sword. Weeks of quelling the rebellion had made him wary of their kind and quick to fight. The wolf growled at him again, prompting Edmund to hesitate before attacking. 

The giantish man shook a mass of fur beside him. “Hodor!” he shouted, pointing at Edmund.

The furs moved, but instead of revealing another wolf, this time a mop of messy black hair appeared, followed by a calm, pale face. Besides, his siblings, Edmund hadn’t seen another human in over a year—not since England—much less a boy his own age. 

“Who are you?” The boy picked up a sword and pointed it at Edmund, but curiously, he did not rise. He didn’t need to. Whereas Edmund was still learning how to be a king, this boy in the fur pile was a natural lord if Edmund had ever seen one. But he seemed kind. Calm and unconsciously confident enough in his position that he didn’t need to be a prig about it.

The old Edmund, back in Finchley, would have hated him on sight, and transferred his jealousy into underhanded attacks. But the Edmund of Narnia was simply curious.

“Who are you?” the boy repeated when Edmund failed to respond the first time. 

“I’m... I’m Edmund.” It took him a few attempts to get the words out through his chattering teeth. He was dressed for spring, not for this deep winter. 

The boy noticed, and motioned for his friend to pass Edmund one of his many furs.

“Where did you come from?” he asked next. “You don’t look like a Wildling.”

Edmund assumed the boy was referring to residents of the Western Wilds, which was odd, as only animals lived there, as far as he knew.

“I’m from Narnia.” He hadn’t yet figured out how to inform the boy that was not only from Narnia, but also its king, without sounding like a prat.

“Is that one of the Wildling territories?”

“No, it’s…” Edmund got the feeling there was something amiss here.

Before they could clear it up, a raven flew into the cabin. And then another. And another. Soon an entire flock was perched on the dilapidated rafters and in holes in the walls. One even tried to land on Edmund’s head. 

“Eugh!” he cried, shooing them with his hands and his sword. “Mr. Wolf, would you please chase them out of here?”

Whereas Edmund felt only annoyance at the presence of the birds, the boy became increasingly terrified with each new arrival. But it was Edmund’s polite request to the wolf, followed by the animal immediately going on a tear around the room, that startled him out of his terror.

“Did you just _talk_ to Summer?”

“Is that your name?” Edmund asked the wolf. “Rather an unlikely name for a dire wolf, isn’t it?”

“Do you communicate with animals, too?” the boy pressed.

“If they look like they’ll talk back, yes, obviously,” Edmund replied, annoyed that the wolf kept being interrupted. With a companion this disrespectful, no wonder the beast was too shy to respond.

“Hodor!” the giant whimpered, as another flock of ravens descended upon them. They were coming thicker and faster now, eerily silent instead of cawing and gossiping like the ones back in Narnia. 

“We must get out of here,” the boy said. “They’re coming.”

“Who are coming? More ravens?” Edmund asked. “It is strange. I do not smell carrion here, but there must be some reason…”

“No, it is the White Walkers who come. The ravens merely herald their arrival. You’re a Wildling. Shouldn’t you know that?”

“I told you, I’m…” But Edmund was distracted from his own statement. He didn’t know what ‘White Walkers’ were, but he did remember the creature that had filled him with such dread weeks ago. Surely it had to be the same creature that was filling this boy with dread right now.

“Take one of these and tie it to the end of your sword,” the boy said. He held out a queer-looking dagger.

“What is this?”

“Dragon glass. It’s the only thing that can kill them.” The boy wrapped his furs around him again and raised his arms to the giant, who hoisted him onto his shoulders.

“Hodor,” the man said, and brandished a piece of dragon glass in each hand.

“Will you help us?” the boy asked from his perch.

And that’s when Edmund understood. This was not simply the other side of the hill. The boy’s contained stillness was not simply a manifestation of quiet courage. The giant was not simply repetitive. And the wolf was not simply shy.

Who had he been to think that his world was the only one, and Narnia a dream just for himself to enjoy? No, it was only logical that there were more, infinite, lurking in various cupboards if only one chose to look.

Just as Aslan had called him and his siblings into Narnia for a purpose, Edmund was certain he had been sent here, to this even more wintry land, for a purpose. This was his second chance. He had selfishly abandoned his siblings to evil once; this time, he would protect this crippled boy, half-witted giant runt, and dumb direwolf from the creature carrying the White Witch’s staff. 

“Follow me,” he said. “I know a way out.”

“Out of what?”

There wasn’t time for a full explanation, and even if there had been, Edmund didn’t think it would make a difference. Some things really did need to be seen to be believed.

As soon as Hodor pushed open the door, the snow blinded them all. But not far in the distance, Edmund could already see blue eyes staring down at them.

“Hodor!” Edmund yelled, throwing himself in front of the giant and waving to the side. “Go that way. Run straight in that direction until you find yourself in a cave. Summer and I will follow.”

Even before Edmund had opened his mouth, Summer had already bared his teeth and positioned himself for an attack. The wolf was obviously very protective of his master, so Edmund didn’t think he was overstepping any bounds by speaking for him in this manner.

As Hodor stumbled through the snow, in the direction from which Edmund had come, the creature advanced. Memories of the horror of the great battle against the Witch’s forces washed over him—the way her staff had swung out at him, knocked him off his balance. The way her blue eyes had met his as she drove the broken edge of it into his side…

His teeth were still chattering, but he told himself not to be afraid.

Edmund lashed out with his dragon glass bayonet (was it still a bayonet if the body of the weapon was also a sword? Edmund found himself wondering). He missed the white creature—it was so hard to tell where it ended and the driving snow began—and was almost cut down when it swung its spear at him in return. Luckily, Summer worried at its ankle, forcing it a little to the right, giving Edmund just enough time to recover his footing and stab the creature through its cold heart.

It made a noise that would haunt Edmund’s nightmares for years to come, before bursting into a thousand pieces of ice. 

Edmund picked up the staff and broke it over his knee, just to be sure. He saw more blue eyes in the distance, too many, entirely too many to fight off alone. Hodor’s lumbering figure was just visible in the distance, but Edmund watched it disappear, too quickly for him to have simply gone out of sight. The exit had to be right at that spot. He and Summer sprinted through the snow to catch up.

Edmund worried that Hodor, in his haste, would trample the still sleeping Peter and Benlan. However, when he reemerged back into the cave, he was shocked to find the place empty, and midday sunlight shining in. Not only were Peter and Benlan missing, but Hodor and the boy, too.

He went to the entrance and peered outside.

Hodor was crumpled in a ball in the middle of the plain, some distance away. A group of dwarves bore down upon him, bows taut and arrows pointed. Underneath Hodor’s bulk, protected, but certainly suffocating, was the little lord.

Around them stood a few members of the army who were acting most strangely. If Edmund’s eyes served him correctly, one of the leopards was actually attacking a stag, who fought bravely with his antlers, amidst confused and dismayed clucks and growls from their compatriots.

Edmund couldn’t understand it. Anthor the stag and Phenlis the leopard had always been such good friends.

“Stop! Stop!” Edmund cried as he and Summer ran towards them. 

“It’s the king!” one of the dwarves said.

A chorus of “He’s alive!” and “Thank the lion!” erupted from the group of dwarves.

“Of course I’m alive. Why wouldn’t I be?” Edmund snapped, glancing down in horror at the boy, who had gone eerily still, his eyes rolled up into his head and showing only the whites. “And stand down. I command you to leave them be.”

Only once the order had been obeyed did the boy’s eyes return to normal.

“Are you all right?” Edmund asked.

“Yes, now that you have called them off.” But then, hearing the whispered chatter of the beasts around him, he went pale again. “How is it that… I can hear them! Even when I am back. All of them. This has never happened before.”

“They all talk here,” Edmund tried to explain, but he was cut off by Anthor.

“We thought this was a dastardly giant who’d kidnapped you, sire.”

“Yes,” said another dwarf. “If that isn’t you underneath him, then who is it?”

“Someone else entirely, as you can well see,” Edmund snapped. “Why would you think I’d been kidnapped?”

“You’ve been missing for over a week. Your brother has been near despairing. He’s taken all the centaurs on a hunt for you, in every direction from here. They’ve all but restarted the war.”

“A week?” Edmund repeated. “I don’t understand.”

“How do I come to have blood on my flank?” Phenlis said dazedly. 

“I had to scratch you with my horn to stop your attack,” Anthor said.

“My attack?”

“Don’t you remember? It was but a moment ago. You went berserk.”

“I don’t remember.”

“If you’re you, your majesty,” one of the dwarves interjected, “then who’s that under there?”

“A friend,” Edmund said. “A friend of mine whom you are showing poor welcome.”

Edmund rubbed Hodor’s shoulder, trying to impart some comfort so that he would loosen his hold on his charge. 

“’Majesty’?” the boy asked when he finally was free to sit up. He tilted his head and looked at Edmund as though seeing him for the first time.

“Yes. It’s a long story. I didn’t actually catch your name,” Edmund said, aware that this didn’t support his claim that these people were friends. 

“I’m Bran Stark. Of Winterfell.” Bran looked around him, noticing his surroundings for the first time, which was understandable, given how jarring all the talking animals must have been. “I don’t think… It isn’t winter here. How…?”

“I can explain on the way.”

“On the way where?”

“Back to Narnia, farther south from where. That’s where we’re all headed. That’s where I’m from. Well, not really, but. I’ll explain.”

“South?” For whatever reason, this, of everything that transpired in the past few minutes, seemed to be the detail that convinced Bran that everything was wrong. He shook his head. “No, no, we can’t go South. We have to go back. We must get back to… to where we were before.”

“I’m not sure you can. At least not now.” Edmund motioned for Hodor to lift Bran. Together, along with the confused and still-suspicious Narnians, they walked back to the cave. Bran saw for himself that the passage had closed, as though it had never existed at all.

“How have you erected this wall? Send me back.” For the first time, a priggish, lordly tone threatened to enter the boy’s voice. “I command you to open it again.”

Edmund couldn’t hold it against him.  
“This wasn’t my doing,” he explained. “If you’re here, it’s because you’re meant to be here. There’s nothing I can do.” When he saw Bran’s crestfallen expression, he reached up to try to pat him on the shoulder, but hoisted up as he was on Hodor’s back, Edmund could only reach his thigh. “Buck up. It’s nice here. Nicer than where you were, at any rate.”

Summer nuzzled his head against Edmund’s leg as a way of telling Bran that he wanted to stay. Even Hodor shrugged, and looked hopefully up at his master.

Before Bran could answer, Peter ran into the cave and knocked his brother down with the force of his joyful embrace. 

“You’re alive!”

“Honestly, Peter, I’ve only been gone an hour. No need for all this fuss.”

“An hour?” Peter repeated incredulously. He finally looked up and saw the strangers in their midst. “Who are you?” 

“This is Bran Stark, of Winterfell,” Edmund announced, not only to Peter, but to the entire company. “He is a friend and a great lord where he comes from.” Edmund didn’t know this for certain, but he could sense it. He continued, “And as such, will be received in the highest court our kingdom has to offer.”

“I say, Ed,” Peter whispered a few minutes later, after they’d packed their bags and strapped a very confused Bran in with Edmund to share a saddle. “What’s all this?”

“A long story, is what it is. One I haven’t heard yet myself.” He looked at Bran thoughtfully. “But I’ve got an idea of where the White Witch got her powers.”


End file.
